North Beach had a paved parking area with a hot dog stand in the far corner, its striped awning faded and tattered around the edges. Dad parked nearby, said, “Want a dog?” which earned him the usual dirty look. He knew Pearl hadn’t touched a hot dog since she ate a bad one at the Blue Hill Fair in sixth grade and threw up on the Sea Dragon.
They walked together, each of them with their hands in their pockets, speaking only when one of them spotted something of interest: a shard of beach pottery veined with cracks, a particularly big crab shell. Now and then, Pearl stooped to examine pieces of sea glass winking up from the sand, leaving most of it for somebody else to discover. She had more than enough common colors in her collection already.
Dad said, “So you talked to your mom today, huh.”
“She called you?”
“At the club, after you hung up on her, yeah. She was pretty upset.”
“It wasn’t like that. I mean, I didn’t yell at her or anything, I just . . . didn’t have anything else to say.” She glanced at him. “Did she freak out on you?”
“Well, she had some questions about what’s going on, how you were. I said you were okay.” He rubbed the sides of his mouth, watching a dog splash into the water after a stick. “Are you?”
It was no small thing, Dad asking that. He was the opposite of Mom, tending to give Pearl more space than she wanted. She thought of thundering fists on a door, the trapped-animal sounds Cassidy had made on the video, tried to push them away. “I’m fine. She’s the one who’s always having a meltdown over nothing. If she wants to know what’s happening with us, why doesn’t she ever come up here and see for herself?”
“Because her life’s down there now. She’s asked you to stay at her place for the weekend plenty of times. You never want to go.”
“So I can sleep on the inflatable mattress and make super-awkward small talk with what’s-his-name? No, thanks.” Pearl bit her lip as they walked. “That was mean.”
Dad shrugged. “You’re her kid. She worries about you.”
“You mean she worries about you. I’m just the go-between.”
“Bullshit. She loves you and you know it.” Dad picked up a stone and skipped it across the water’s surface. “You need to call her more, or email, something. Stay in touch.”
“Okay. I’ll try.” In that moment, she meant it.
A few minutes later, her phone chimed—new text. Pearl glanced, saw Bridges’s name, kept the screen angled slightly away from Dad as she texted back, not much in response to his wuz up? Not that it was Dad’s style to sneak a peek, anyway.
Bridges: missed u last night.
She hesitated, typed, did you guys go out later? On the water, maybe, in Tristan’s Rivelle?
A pause. Then, an emoticon, a smiley face with devil horns.
where?
No response for so long that she almost put her phone back in her pocket. Then: u into tennis?
Okay, random. never played.
tomorrow @ 2ish?
Pearl exhaled slowly through her nose, sent back a thumbs-up. As she tucked her phone away, she noticed a shard of cobalt-blue glass near her foot. Probably from an old medicine bottle, smashed who knew how many decades ago on another coast, tumbled smooth by time and tide. She wiped it off with the hem of her T-shirt, held it up to the dusky light.
“A keeper?” Dad said.
“Definitely.”
Eleven
THEY HADN’T CHECKED the mail in days. From the kitchen, where Pearl threw together a bag lunch to bring to work, she could see the mailbox door hanging open, letters and drugstore flyers sticking out. Neither she nor Dad wanted to be the jerk who brought the bills into the house.
Sighing, she went outside into the bright morning, yanking on the mail until it came free. The Clarence Agency: bill collector; Central Maine Power: past due; a heavy cream-colored envelope with her name and address printed in calligraphy across the front. The return address was the club. For a crazy moment, she wondered if it might be a pink slip, but not even Meriwether would be that pretentious. Brow furrowed, Pearl tore open the seal and pulled out the square of card stock inside.
You are cordially invited to
the Tenney’s Harbor Country Club
Formal Ball and Benefit Auction
She stared for a long moment, running down the details. Eight to eleven p.m., open bar and heavy hors d’oeuvres, auction to benefit the local nonprofit tutoring program. She checked again to make sure it really said her name on the envelope. This made no sense, unless she’d ended up on the list by mistake, somebody mixing up their spreadsheets at the club.
She heard the screen door open behind her and quickly shuffled the envelope in with the other mail, keeping her head down. “You want toast?” Dad said from the front steps.
“Coming.” She slid past him into the house.
She tried not to glance at the stack of mail until Dad was in the bathroom, at which point she grabbed the invitation and took it down to her room, hiding it between the mattress and box spring, along with Cassidy’s memory card.
Reese moved past her, no acknowledgment. Breakfast/brunch shift was tough on everybody, even on an average day: the prep cooks and busboys were still blinking sleep from their eyes, and the servers were sneaking coffee every chance they got. It was ten minutes before the dining room doors opened for the day, and as Pearl watched Reese taking chairs down from tabletops and setting places, she suddenly felt like hitting him—or at the very least, throwing some eggs Benedict at him.
“Really?” She stopped in the middle of righting a chair, looking at him across their sections. “You’re just not going to talk to me now?”
He dropped a chair heavily onto its legs, grabbed another.
“Fine. But you’re being stupid.” She glanced at him. He still had his back to her. “You don’t even know what’s going on. You didn’t even ask.”
Thump. Another captain’s chair landed on the hardwood.
“Reese—”
“Pearl, I don’t give a shit. Okay?” The next chair dropped so far that the bang echoed to the rafters. “Save it.” As she stared, speechless, he turned and went into the kitchen.
The morning continued as it always did, sunlight slanting across the room in the usual patterns, Lou Pulaski and some golf cronies meeting for artery-clogging breakfasts, talking too loudly and laughing too much for Pearl to keep her thoughts on anything but Reese’s words. How had they gone from holding hands in the dark to I don’t give a shit? She’d seen him annoyed before, irritable occasionally, but never like this—never to the point of completely shutting her out. Feeling slightly stunned, she went through the motions until she noticed a palpable shift in atmosphere, a redirection of focus to the patio entrance.
Frederick Spencer Sr., the patriarch, came in, removing his cap and smoothing the pure white feathers of his hair. He wore a pale-yellow sport shirt, khakis, and Italian loafers. Beside him, Bridges was a young, trendy version, Ralph Lauren to the old man’s Gucci. When the ma?tre d’ abandoned his podium—seldom done—to hurry over to seat them, Bridges said something quietly to his grandfather and pointed Pearl out.
The ma?tre d’ led them to Pearl’s section, Mr. Spencer meeting and greeting the whole way, patting shoulders and exchanging good mornings. Pearl felt a blush growing; she’d waited on him a few times before, but always as a nameless server, someone who would fade from memory before Mr. Spencer’s crepes had fully digested.
She walked over, provided menus, said, “Good morning, gentlemen,” in a tone that she hoped made clear to Bridges that she wasn’t out to endear herself, wouldn’t be leaping into his lap like a giddy cocker spaniel in front of the great man.
“Hey. I wasn’t sure if you’d be working this morning.” Bridges smiled. “Gramps, this is Pearl. Pearl, this is my grandfather, Fred.”
She hesitated, caught between roles. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
Mr. Spencer put his hand out. It was tanned, deeply lined, and she was surprised to feel calluses on the palms. “Likewise, young lady.” His eyes must be the wellspring of the Spencer blue, vivid and lively. “My grandson’s quite impressed by you. I hear you sail?”